Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2532: STOP Trying to Go From 30% to 10% Body Fat... Do This Instead

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

STOP Trying to Go From 30% to 10% Body Fat & DO THESE 3 Things Instead! The BIGGEST mistake people make when trying to do this. (1:08) Changing your approach. (3:09) STOP Trying to Go From 30% Body Fat To 10% Body Fat & DO THESE 3 Things Instead! #1 - Get stronger. (5:47) #2 - Get healthier. (9:50) #3 - Change your relationship with food. (16:50) Questions: How many calories should I be eating to lose fat without starving myself? (26:59) How do I figure out how much protein, carbs, and fat I should be eating? (29:29) Do I need to completely cut out carbs to get lean, or is there a smarter way? (31:45) What are the best foods to keep me full while I’m trying to lose weight? (34:04) How do I deal with cravings? I keep wanting snacks even though I’m trying to stay on track! (36:07) Does intermittent fasting really work, or is it just another fad? (38:50) Is it okay to have a cheat meal every week, or will that totally mess up my progress? (40:59) How do I stick to my diet when I eat out with friends or family? (44:44) Should I be taking any supplements to help burn fat or build muscle while I’m dieting? (46:25) Related Links/Products Mentioned Get your free Sample Pack with any “drink mix” purchase! Also try the new LMNT Sparkling — a bold, 16-ounce can of sparkling electrolyte water: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump February Promotion: MAPS Anabolic & No B.S. 6-Pack ** We are offering them both for the low price of $59.99, which is a savings of $114! ** Building Muscle with Adam Schafer – Mind Pump TV Mind Pump #2442: How Strong Should You Be? The Fastest Way to Get Bigger & Stronger at the Same Time The Power of Mindful Eating - Transform Your Relationship with Food Mind Pump #1830: Five Steps to Determine Your ideal Caloric Intake The Myth of Optimal Protein Intake – Mind Pump Media Mind Pump #1860: Fourteen of the Best Foods for an Amazing Physique Mind Pump #1797: The 5 Step Strategy to Defeat Cravings Mind Pump #2405: The 5 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes Causing Weight Gain Mind Pump #2162: The Best Supplements You Can Take for Building Muscle, Performance & Health Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump, right? Today's episode, we talk about going from 30% to 10% body fat.

If you're trying to do that, and you're trying to do it fast, stop, we're gonna tell you what to do instead so you can get there and stay there. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Element. This is an electrolyte drink that's got enough sodium to make a difference, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar. It tastes amazing, helps fuel your workouts, especially if you have hot, sweaty workouts, good time.

Go check them out. Go to drinklmnt.com forward slash mind pump. On that link, you'll get a free sample pack with any drink mix purchase. Also, it's February, MAPS, Anabolic, and the No BS Six Pack formula have been put together and discounted heavily, $114 off. Get them both for $59.99.

If you're interested, go to MathsFebruary.com. All right, here comes the show. Stop trying to go from 30% body fat to 10% body fat. You're doing it wrong. Instead, try this, and if you do what we say, you will be successful. Wait a second, I thought I did a video on that. What?

How to go from 30% to 30%. Are you undermining me? Yeah. Yeah. So for people who realize, so we're talking about body fat for men, percentage for men. For women, you could add probably, you know, five to 10% to this,

but 30% body fat for a man is you're obese. You're pretty overweight. 10%, you probably have a visible six pack. So going from obese to lean, one of the biggest mistakes that people who attempt this make is they go right out the gates trying to get leaner. Burning calories. Right out the gates, my goal is to get leaner.

And it makes sense, I get this, it makes sense that if your goal is to lose fat, you're at 30% body fat, then that's where I should start right I should start with Losing the fat and that's actually not the case in fact if you try right off the gates to lose body fat Without setting up a strong foundation and in both mentality psychology, but also in just physiology Then you're going to fail like you're gonna hit a wall real quick Well, yeah Let me tell you why what you're about to go over

is so important that you have to do it this way because if you don't, you will fail inevitably. Even if you see good results for the first 30 days, the pursuit of 10% body fat, coming from somewhere like 30% body fat, is such a long journey that you will inevitably hit plateaus and if you go about it the way the general pop tells you or even the fitness space of the you know calories in versus calories out model so cut my calories and

and just burn more that way will eventually lead to a wall and a plateau that'll be really difficult to recover from if you don't do it the right way. Yes, now to be clear, calories in versus calories out is a law of physics, so we're not saying that that's not true, but what we're saying is the approach is all wrong. So what a lot of people do at 30% body fat

when they try to accomplish this, is they say, okay, I'm gonna really cut my calories. So my calories in need to be less than my calories out. So I'm gonna cut my calories, and I'm gonna move a lot to try to burn more calories. But here's what happens, is your body learns how to balance that back out. And the way it does it is by ramping up your hunger,

so it tries to get you to eat more, but let's say you don't. Let's just say, I'm really disciplined. I'm gonna just white knuckle these cravings. I'm just gonna keep eating low calorie. Your body will take your metabolic rate and figure out a way, and it does this very effectively, to slow it down to meet the intake.

So what ends up happening is you go from 30% to 25%, 27%, 22%, you hit this crazy plateau, and then you're left with the following conundrum. I need to eat less calories? I'm already eating so little, I gotta cut them even more? And so then maybe you cut them even more. You lose another 3%, then you plateau even harder, and you're in a really, really bad place

where you're eating very little, you're moving a lot, and you're stuck, and this is one of the reasons why people just fail. They back out of it because I don't blame them. Can you eat even less? Can you move even more? Does that even work for you in a long-term sustainable model? No, for most people it doesn't.

This is especially true for somebody who has attempted fat loss multiple times in their life already. I don't know if we have the science or the words to explain this phenomenon, but I've experienced this with clients that have dieted many, many times before, before they got to me, and we do this. If we go straight to the cutting calories,

they hit that plateau even faster. It's almost like their body has already been calorie restricted and pushed in the gym or running or whatever form of training they choose before so many times that it's almost like it remembers it so much faster. Like the guy or girl who's never weight trained, never dieted that goes this approach seems to get away

with it for a little bit longer. The person that has repeatedly yo-yo dieted, their body seems to adapt and figure this out right away and so even quicker if they hit a plateau. It almost seems like a built-in survival mechanism. Yes. Right? Like you need to adapt. Right. This is this might be something that occurs multiple times so I need to conserve the energy by all means necessary which is your body's doing that effectively. I experience the same thing with my clients. Alright so what do you do instead? so I need to conserve the energy by all means necessary, which is, your body is doing that effectively. I experience the same thing with my clients. All right, so what do you do instead?

All right, I want to go from 30% to 10%, what should I do first? Get stronger. Get stronger with strength training. Now why? As you get stronger, you are tipping the scale to your advantage when it comes to calorie burn because you are building muscle,

improving insulin sensitivity, improving your hormone profile through increased androgen receptor density, that's what happens as you start to build muscle. Essentially what you're doing is you're teaching your body both directly and indirectly through the getting stronger process to burn more calories on its own. So think of it this way,

you wanna build a house and you want to see the house really bad. And you look when you look at a house, you don't see the foundation. Nobody sees the foundation when you look at a house. They see the walls, they see the paint, they see the roof. Nobody sees the foundation. When you try building a house without a foundation and see how far you get, you don't get very far. The strength is the foundation that allows you to build the house of fat loss. Without that foundation those walls are flimsy and they'll come crumbling down. So what you should do first before you ever worry about losing weight or even trying to cut your calories necessarily is I'm gonna go strength train and I'm gonna try and get stronger and I'm gonna try and get stronger at some basic

exercises, squatting and deadlifting and pushing and pressing and pulling. Let me get stronger and I know when I'm getting stronger, I'm building that foundation which is going to serve me well later on. Otherwise, I'm running head first into an impossible to overcome plateau and I'll fail. Yeah, I like the idea of it like you're building an engine, right, and adding horsepower to a car. If the goal is to get from 30 down to 10%, it's like winning a race. And you're a race car driver, and you're

you could go right into practicing the drag race. And incrementally, you may get a little bit better at that drag race, but you'd be far better off building the horsepower in that car because that's gonna make a bigger difference. Before you start the race. Before you even practice the race even, right? It's like, go build the horsepower in that. You're gonna have a far greater advantage

of winning the race than just simply taking that horsepower, whatever it is in that car, and just saying, oh, I'm gonna try and race with the best of the best. It's like, go build that horsepower. That's what you do when you build muscle, you build muscle, you speed up your body's metabolism. It makes your pursuit of reducing body fat significantly easier and not just easier getting to the goal, but then maintaining it, which is where almost

everybody fails a hundred percent. And you know, uh, at the least, you're going to make your body resilient to the downward metabolic adaptation that occurs when you cut your calories. When you cut your calories, your body tries to slow down to compensate. By the way, one of the ways it does this is it pairs muscle down. So this is why study after study after study after study shows that cutting calories to lose weight results in weight loss, but a significant portion of that weight comes from muscle.

What's happening? Why is it that when people cut their calories in every study that's ever done on the subject, why is it that 40% and many of them, 30%, 50% sometimes in some of the studies, why is it that that large of a percentage of the weight that is lost is coming from muscle? Is the body using the muscle for energy? Is it burning the muscle? No,

it's not. It's paring it down because it's trying to meet the new caloric intake. It's trying to slow its own metabolic rate down to adapt to what you're consuming. Strength training directly combats this. If I give my body a reason to have muscle, then it's gonna have that muscle. If I give my body a reason to build muscle and I eat adequately, that's the other part of this, I eat adequately to fuel that muscle growth, I'm gonna start building muscle

and I'm gonna set my metabolic rate up in an advantageous way so that I can get that fat off and not hit those crazy plateaus that are impossible. Again, they're impossible to overcome. The next thing that you would do is you would focus on getting healthier. I'm going to tell you something right now. A healthy body has a much easier time getting lean than an unhealthy body. Now, a lot of people are thinking, isn't losing weight getting healthier?

Yes, it is, but there's an unhealthy way to approach this that makes it very difficult. And here's the other part of this, if you look at your health and you start to measure your health in terms of your progress, what you start to notice are things that you typically won't notice

when you're just focused on the scale. What you notice is vitality, energy, libido, sleep, skin, digestion, mobility, you know performance like you know stamina, strength. When you start to pay attention to those things you notice them and as your health improves your fat loss efforts become easier and easier. Now if I starve myself and beat myself up and over train in in pursuit of weight loss, I start to sacrifice my health in pursuit of weight loss and at some point what my body does is it becomes overcome with the stress that I'm placing upon it, it actually

holds on to body fat. It wants to hold on to body fat. Body fat is an insurance mechanism against stress. For most of human history, that was starvation. So your body will make it very difficult. Now you talk to any hormone expert or functional medicine practitioner, how hard is it for somebody to get lean when their hormones are at a rack? Or how hard is it for somebody to get lean when their sleep is really bad or their health is poor and they'll tell you it is.

I mean there's one study I've brought up many times on the show where they took two groups of people put them in a calorie deficit. One group they sleep deprived, the other group they gave them good sleep. The sleep deprived group lost twice as much muscle. They saw that's the same weight on the scale. But the sleep deprived group lost a lot of muscle more so than the other group did twice as much muscle. They saw that's the same weight on the scale, but the sleep deprived group lost a lot of muscle, more so than the other group did, twice as much. So getting healthier moves you in the right direction. And how do you measure that? Again, vitality. I like to use that word because it encompasses quite a bit.

Well, isn't like when you lose weight and it gets unhealthy is when you really stop paying attention to those signals that your body's providing you. You get so, you put your horse blinders on and you're trying to white knuckle your way to get to a destination instead of listening to a lot of these different things that you mentioned in terms of, or even just paying attention to your skin and the quality of your sleep and your digestion

and all of these things, all of these different systems of the body, if something's off You know this slows the progress down You know if you want to look at it just from an overall perspective The whole body if all systems are working correctly is so much more effective and efficient which shortens the time substantially well, if you're 30% body fat and You set off to go and reduce that body fat percentage, and you're thinking that is a healthy choice, but you have to understand that the mode at which you decide

to do that at, cardio, weight training, are all stresses to the body. They're good because they have a positive effect from that, but it still counts as a stress. And if your hormones are in balance, your sleep is disrupted, you aren't getting enough protein, you're low on vitamin D, you're low on magnesium, you're not getting, you have all these other things that you're not giving the body, all that causes stress on the body. And then your stress bucket fills up so much faster.

And then when you get to a point where that stress overspills, you're just not going to see the results that you want to see. Even though the pursuit of reducing body fat you think is a healthy pursuit, you can do it in an unhealthy way, which is why I think this advice is so important that first pursue health and getting strong as your main focus. Even though the goal is I want to go down to 10% body fat from 30%, you can't allow that to be your main focus because if you do many times you'll go in the wrong direction versus I'm going to first focus on being healthy and getting strong, which may not result in the body fat percentage changing much at first. But if I focus on that first, that stuff will follow.

But if you try and force your way, Justin's point white knuckle your way there, the inevitable happen where your body will revolt. And eventually, whether that's 1%, 3%, 5%, 10% down the road, it'll eventually revolt and say, enough is enough. I'm not going to respond, which I think is what happens to most people in this pursuit of reducing your body fat percentage that much,

is even if they were seeing good results initially, eventually that stress bucket overspills, they're not healthy, and their body reminds them that by not showing them the results. That's right, and here's the thing, getting healthier, if you consistently pursue that and continue to accomplish that pursuit, you'll get leaner, you will get leaner.

That's the side effect of good health. If you were to close your eyes and picture a genuinely healthy person, healthy both physically, mentally, all of the categories of health and they're really healthy, how do they look? They look pretty lean. They've got good mobility, they've got good strength, they've got decent stamina. Can you lose weight and be less healthy? Can you lose weight and become unhealthy? Absolutely. I mean the extreme examples are getting ill, right? You get sick, you lose tons of weight, you know, that's not healthy, right? So my point with this is getting healthy will lead you to your

goal and set you up for sustainability. Not focusing on health doesn't guarantee you weight loss. In fact, if you don't focus on health and just focus on the scale, oftentimes you go in the wrong direction. And I've used this example many, many times. This is a well-studied phenomenon. This is just how humans are. We only see what we pay attention to even when things are right in front of our face. There's a very famous study. You can pull it up on YouTube. I'm going to give you the answer, so it's not going to work on you now, but it's a classic video that they've shown in psychology classes in high schools forever.

But you got a bunch of people in the video passing a basketball back and forth. And the idea is to count, yeah, you're supposed to count how many times the basketball is being passed back and forth. So that's what the professor says. How many times is it passed back and forth? So you count one, two, three, and I don't know, it's like 15 times.

At the end of the video he says, did you see the gorilla walk through the video? And you're like, no. They rewind the video and there's literally a man in a gorilla suit who walks through the group of people passing the basketball. About 80% of people don't see the gorilla because they're only counting the basketball,

even though he literally walks right through and in front of your vision. So the point with this is when you're not paying attention to your health improvements and only looking at the scale, you won't even notice them. In fact, you won't even notice you're getting less healthy. I've seen this with clients many times where they come in and they're doing things the wrong way, and they're excited because the scale is going down, but all the other metrics show us that their health is going in the wrong direction. Or we start off the right way, improve their health,

they don't necessarily see the scale going down, and they're like, I'm not improving. And then I start pointing things out to them they go oh my god you're right I do feel much better and it does give you a much more complete picture which takes us to the third point you have to do this you have to change your relationship to food if your relationship to food stays the same this is gonna be a relationship you're gonna go back to your this is a temporary thing you change your diet to lose weight and you didn't change your relationship to diet, you'll go back to your old relationship. It's just like any other relationship.

You go back to your abusive boyfriend if you don't fix the reasons why you went to that person in the first place. This is the same thing with food. So what does that look like? Well, most people's relationship to food in modern society, especially people who struggle with obesity, what they relate to food or the relationship they have to food really centers around palatability, how enjoyable is it to eat this particular food, and convenience.

Those are the two things, but palatability being number one, convenience being number two. And you know this, right? You're with your friends and you're looking for a place for lunch and everybody says, well, what do you want for lunch? And everybody's like, ooh, I feel like Chinese, or I feel like Mexican.

The decision is made primarily based off of the palatability of the disabilities. Which, by the way, which is a real thing to pay attention to, it's a real value that food provides, but it's only one of many values that food provides, but we don't see those values because our relationship is focused just on palatability. So the relationship needs to change. How do you do that?

Well, you start paying attention to how food affects you in other ways, energy, digestion, skill, stool, I mean, skill in the gym, performance in the gym, sleep. Start paying attention to all of these other factors stool, I mean, skill in the gym, performance in the gym, sleep. Start paying attention to all of these other factors that food can start that can actually influence and just does influence. What ends up happening is you start to develop a more complete picture of food and what you'll find is you'll start craving foods that are better for you because now you're noticing all these

other things and you'll stop craving or crave less those foods that taste so good but now you notice, man when I eat that I get heartburn and when I eat that I get bad sleep and when I eat that my energy crashes and now I notice that and I kind of don't want that as much as I used to. I love this piece of advice because I've never met a person who was 30% body fat or higher that wasn't disconnected from all these signs. Yes. And by the, including myself, right? Long period of my life, I went through thinking that, you know, gas and your stool being on or off

was just a part of life and that it just randomly came and went. I was completely, and this is even as a trainer, you would think that I would have some intimate knowledge to why that was and it just had not dawned on me because I think I just experienced it my entire life that all these different food choices were affecting me that way. It does take work, just like any relationship does, takes work towards that. It's not like an overnight switch, like someone tells you, oh, by the way, food affects your stool, your skin, your energy, your mood, all those things. And you go like, okay, cool. Solved. It's like, no, you, you actually have to work on it.

You have to choose to make good or bad decisions and become aware of what is the next 24 hours feel like with all these things? How did it affect my stool? How did it affect my mood? How did it affect my energy? How did it affect my skin? My hair? All my performance in the gym? Did I have any crashes?

And we just tend to ignore that. We go right after what you said, Sal, which is, oh, that was so good. And maybe the furthest you think out is like, oh yeah, boy, I was stuffed or bloated afterwards. And that's kind of like, oh yeah, I know pizza makes me feel all stuffed and bloated. But then you just shut it down after that.

Oh yeah, well, what did it feel like the next, what was your next two stools like? How was your sleep that night? How was your sleep that night? How did you perform at work that day? We don't even go that far. It's like, that's as far as we connect it. And the better you get at

making these connections to these foods that don't serve you and you make that connection to how it doesn't serve you in all these other ways, it makes it's easier to pass on it. Yeah. And it's also easier too when the times call for it when it makes sense to enjoy the birthday cake with your son or daughter because it's their birthday and it's like, you know, I'm gonna pay for this a little bit. I think I'll just have a small size because I want to enjoy the moment with my kid. You just tend to make different decisions like that and there's something to be said too about the psychology around you consciously making that decision on why you don't want to have it because you know how it affects you versus you saying like, oh, I'm on a diet. I can't have it. If you approach your relationship with food like that, that I'm on a diet right

now so I can't have these things, I guarantee you'll go back. I guarantee you will end up going back and putting the weight back on if you don't wrap your brain around how you have to change that relationship. Now the question is how do I make myself more aware? Do I just think about it more? It's actually you need to create some structure around Now the question is how do I make myself more aware? Do I just think about it more? It's actually, you need to create some structure around awareness because you're so used to, we're all so used to these kind of automatic processes when it comes to food.

So here's what you do, it's very simple. Before you eat something or you order something, you go out to eat something, how do I feel now? What am I gonna get out of this food? What do I think I'm gonna feel? And then after you eat, how was it, how do I feel now? What am I gonna get out of this food? What do I think I'm gonna feel? And then after you eat, how was it? How do I feel now? That's it.

It's just enough prompts, and it can be a word or two. It doesn't have to be a sentence, but just some prompts to bring you back to awareness. How do I feel now? Stressed out. What am I gonna get out of this food? Stress relief, right? Suddenly, if this happens enough time,

like man, I eat a lot of food to get some stress. I just need a break. Sometimes I used to get clients with that. You know what I noticed, right? Suddenly, if this happens enough time, like man, I eat a lot of food to get some stress, I just need a break. Sometimes I see clients with that, you know what I noticed, Sal? A lot of these foods that I eat, the reason why I want them is it gives me a break. Well, what does that mean to you? I think it's just, I'm enjoying myself for a second

because I'm stressed out. They weren't even aware that that was happening. And you don't need to do anything, by the way. You don't need to make any changes necessarily around this. You just need to start to bring awareness to it. The changes start to happen as the awareness grows and then you'll find yourself by the way wanting foods that don't serve you less and wanting foods that serve you more as a natural consequence. Especially when you start to compare and contrast these things. For example, I'll keep

using the pizza analogy because I feel like pizza hits everybody so many similar, like the same way, right? Don't take them with pizza. Very few people I know can eat a big old fricking round table pizza and like feel fine, right? So I think it's a good analogy we'll use. But then also comparing it to these other foods and how, because I think that's the other thing too,

is like even, I think we're so disconnected that even when we eat the healthy foods, we don't realize how good we actually feel. And it's like, wow, I didn't even realize. And to me, being able to see that contrast makes it even easier. Because maybe you don't have any crazy intolerances or maybe you don't have any gut issues and you're lucky, right? And you have things like that and it doesn't make you feel great, but you don't feel horrible

to where it's obvious. But then you also don't even pay attention to when you eat these healthy foods, how good it actually makes you feel. And the better you can get connected to both those and you can compare the two of them, easier it is to make that decision. Because it's like, it's a very clear, huge difference between the two of them.

Look, here's what happens. When your understanding or awareness around food is narrow and it's palatability, that's all you're judging your food off of. Whether you're conscious of it or not, that's it. So if I have a healthy meal and I have pizza and all I'm basically judging it off of is palatability, pizza wins every single time.

And that's true. Palatability, when it comes to foods that are palatable, that's a real value. I'm not saying it's not a value, but it's definitely something to put in the value circle that you're paying attention to. Palatability is definitely there. But if I don't add anything else up to it,

I don't know of anything else, or I'm not aware of anything else, palatable food is so much better. Like, oh, bowl of well-cooked spinach versus birthday cake in palatability? Well, it's gonna be birthday cake. Celebratory food items versus everyday items that nourish me, that's like how I decide.

Yeah, but now let me put it this way. What if I was, what if my awareness around food was around improved digestion? Right. And I have birthday cake and well-cooked spinach. Which one wins? Well-cooked spinach kicks the crap at a birthday cake. Now, so now let's just, by the way,

there's far more values in that. There's energy, performance, sleep, you know, all that stuff. But let's just say it was digestion and palatability, and I walk up to it. And the context I'm experiencing right now is bad digestion. Which one wins? Spinach. Now I'm walking up to it bad digestion. Which one wins? Spinach. Now I'm walking up to it, digestion's perfectly fine,

and it's my kid's birthday, and I'm gonna hang out with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Which one wins? Probably palatability. And so this is how you make, this is how you develop a complete relationship with food that will serve you, and what will end up happening is,

you will eat healthier as a natural consequence. If you don't change your relationship to food though, you're gonna go back to that abusive boyfriend every single time and you won't understand why. Well, another thing I think that's important to this conversation because I think this is something I've had to do with a lot of these clients that I'm working on this relationship,

is how often we distract ourselves to how we're eating. So it's almost like the... You're making your awareness go away. The girlfriend that's in denial that she even gets, that she even gets beat or gets in these fights when it's like, Oh my God, it's like so obvious to everybody else, but not even that own person because they completely ignore it.

It's no different than the person who's eating this way in front of the television or in front of their phone all the time that they're not even paying attention to their, their stomach gurgling and how they feel because they're ignoring it. So being distracted while you eat is like sometimes the first step of getting people becoming aware. They have studies on that, it's very clear by the way. You take the same food, eat it while distracted versus not distracted, you will eat 10% to 15% more

calories. Just because you're just you're disconnected even from your satiety signals. So even if it doesn't bother you, your ability to recognize the fact that you're satisfied is reduced because you're distracted. So awareness is how you develop a relationship with food. And again, that relationship will move in the positive if you start to develop a better relationship. Got some questions here. The first one is, how many calories should I actually be eating to lose fat without starving myself? See, this is a good question.

When you get to the point where you're stronger, I'm getting healthier, my relationship to food is getting better, I think now it's time to actually look at my calories and start cutting my calories. How many should I cut or how low should I be? You first wanna determine what is keeping you at your current weight. So step one is to track what is keeping you at your current weight. So

step one is to track what you're eating now on a daily basis for about two weeks and don't change anything. Get that number, figure out what your average is and then typically you're just gonna cut three to five hundred calories from there and that would be a calorie deficit that's not starving yourself but is enough to produce some moderate fat loss. To me, the key to this is where you begin, the calorie cutting place is the most important. Where people get in this predicament of feeling like they're starving themselves,

and this happens a lot. I get somebody who's at 30% body fat, who wants to go down to 10% body fat, and they're only eating 22,200 calories a day. And so we have this long runway or long goal of reducing 20% body fat and I'm only working with 2,200 calories and so they got to drop down to 1,500 or less to show any sort of movement on the scale. This is why the original advice is so important that you get healthier, you build muscle,

you get stronger first, because we wanna be from a place metabolically that I could easily cut you 500, and maybe over the course of that entire time, a thousand calories, and you're still at a sustainable place. So to me, you need to look at that first. And so for my female clients, I never wanna go below 1500 calories

at the very end of this runway. So then for them, think 1,000 calories out, they need to be at least say 2,500 calories before I start to really start to cut them. If we're going this far percentage-wise, different story, I'm only trying to move 3% to 5%, but someone who's going to try and move 20% body fat, I need to have at least 1,000 calorie buffer to be able to reduce them to where they don't feel like they're starving their body and I have multiple times that I could cut down. So generic number for me is always like I want my female clients at around 2500 at least if this is where they're currently at.

I want my male clients over 3,000, 3,500 calories if we have that that far to go. And the way you get there is by the first initial advice, which is slowly get stronger, build muscle. Then you come down that way. How do I figure out how much protein, carbs and fat I should be eating? You start with protein, then you look at fat and then carbs, uh, are not essential. So we could play with those quite a bit, but protein, one gram per pound of target body weight is a good place to start.

So if you wanna weigh 130 pounds, eat 130 grams of protein a day. If you wanna weigh 180 pounds, 180 grams of protein a day. Fat, I almost never allowed my clients to go below 50 grams, typically closer to 60 grams. So that would be a starting place. And then carbs and fats from there can be traded.

So I could go higher in fat, lower in carb, or higher in carb, lower in fat. And that is what I would use to make up the difference for the calories that we're trying to hit. So I love that advice because there's such an individual variance to how each client is going to respond, how they're going to like the diet, which is by the way very important, right, to adherence. is that you enjoy eating this way. If it's you're miserable eating

this way, then we have to figure something out. And so my favorite way to do it is the protein is the easiest is to figure out whatever our goal weight is that we want to weigh. That's how many grams of protein you're going to eat. So if you want to weigh 130 pounds, 130 grams of protein, that's simple. And then I actually love to actually play with the fat and carbs and say, okay, then we, let's go right down the middle to start us. Cause I like to just make it easy. Like 50% of your calories is coming from carbs and fat.

So we just divide it right down the middle, half from carbs, half from fat. Let's see how you feel. Now let's have some days where most of those calories come from fat. And then let's have some days where most of those calories come from carbs. And I'm working with a client to find out

how did your energy feel? How did your appetite feel? How did you sleep? How did you like that? Like, how does that feel natural, choosing foods? So that's actually what's enjoyable about building like a diet or a routine like this is the protein is the most important thing

to really stay consistent with and then we could really manipulate the fats and carbs and the only thing we ever got to really worry about with the fats and carbs is the fat going Too low is a fat being below essential because it is an essential Macronutrient so we need it But for the most part I'll allow my clients on a daily basis to kind of manipulate the two of them and see where they Where they like best. Do I need to completely cut out carbs to get lean or is there a smarter way?

No, no, no. You can eat, it's all about the calories, protein's important, essential fats are important, but no, you could go as low as zero carbs to get leaner or you could go quite high with your carbs. Again, so long as your protein and your fat intake is adequate, you're perfectly fine. Some people do well on one versus the other.

Low carb or zero carb, some people find that more effective. The problem is that you're cutting out an entire category of food and it does make it harder to navigate the world when you're eating almost no carbohydrates. There's just a lot of foods out there that contain carbohydrates. Some people have a hard time with the energy too as well, especially in their workouts. So there's pros and cons to each of these when I'm helping clients.

I just get done saying how I like to split and then here's what you get for feedback. Typically somebody who likes to eat higher carb, they enjoy the energy spikes from it. They feel much better in their workouts. The drawback of it, they also tend to struggle more with the cravings and the appetite. Carbs tend to do that more. When you have a higher fat and protein in a lower carb diet, it tends to satiate you and depress that. Now the drawback of the low carbs is they feel,

some clients feel, I don't have a lot of energy or I'm flat in my workouts. And so this is where this, I like to have the clients play with both to see what they do better with. Some people can be, and I think Sal's an example of this, can be completely low carb, go into the workout in the first thing in the morning on like no carbs whatsoever

and have a great workout still. I just can't, I just feel horrible. I can't even get motivated to lift unless I have at least 70 to 90 grams of carbohydrates inside of me and that becomes really important. Now I also know that if I go too high carbohydrates, it really makes it difficult to curb the cravings. And so this is where you play with this and you decide what is more difficult for you. Are you the person who it's more difficult to get up and do the workout because you don't have lots of energy because you don't have a lot of carbs? Or you have more of a challenge with refraining from foods that you shouldn't be eating because your

cravings are going wild because you're higher carb. That's how I would dictate this with a client would be based off of- And it is different from person to person. That's right, person to person. What are the best foods to keep me That's right, person to person. What are the best foods to keep me full while I'm trying to lose weight? Whole natural foods that are high in protein.

High protein natural foods, and the data is very clear on this, and again, I'll speak from experience with clients, are very satiety producing. So if you're in a low calorie or lower calorie diet you want high protein dishes and eat the protein first and what they find in studies when we eat people eat the protein first they're gonna eat less overall it also controls blood sugar. Second would be fiber you know so if you if you want

like the complete picture here it's high protein and high fiber whole natural foods both of those are very effective. In other words, eat your meat and then veggies always first. I've never had a client struggle with fat loss and or not gaining weight, who could just follow this simple rule of eating a high protein diet and whole foods, eating the protein first and then your veggies first,

and literally not telling them they can't have the carbs or not telling them they can't have the dessert. Like literally just sell it like eat those first and make that a habit and good luck putting weight on that. It is difficult. And to me, this is always like the great like eye opener for people who don't realize how much these foods have been engineered to hijack your body's natural signals. Like it is crazy how we were designed to just kind of naturally eat what we're supposed to and maintain a healthy body weight and what science has evolved us to make these foods that are so mind-blowing that you just all those signals are going wild and you if you just follow those rules

you're like damn I don don't even wanna eat anymore. Well, not only that, it's just consumerism in general. We've been so conditioned to do the opposite in terms of order of carbs are first because you're going in and it's to the benefit of the restaurant or whoever's making the actual product for you to eat and consume more of it. So that's what they've conditioned us to,

we're prone to just do that first. How do I deal with cravings? I keep wanting snacks even though I'm trying to stay on track. Two parts here. One, food relationship helps with cravings because sometimes cravings are, many times, they're related more to your mood

and the context of what's going on. Things like stress, anxiety, depression, boredom, can lead to cravings. Again, the data on this is pretty clear, but training clients, this is very, very true. Second is you're gonna have some hunger if you're in a calorie deficit, so get comfortable with being a little hungry,

you're supposed to. Hunger's not a bad signal, it's a real signal. Trying to never be hungry again is weird. It's like trying to never be sad the rest of your life, it's impossible. And then lastly, if your calorie deficit is too big, your hunger signal's gonna be too strong. So if you're maintaining your body at 2,500 calories a day

and I go down to 1,200 calories a day, that's such a big deficit that the hunger signals, especially in the first month, are gonna be so strong, gonna be very difficult to overcome. So those are the places I would look first. Food relationship, why I'm actually craving these things, am I getting enough calories, am I getting enough protein, and is this just normal hunger from being in a deficit?

Yeah, those, and then also too, I mean being hydrated really helps with that signal. And that's just something I found with myself and clients is if I continuously have the ability to drink water and maintain that, my craving signal is a lot lower. This is an example of what I was just saying, how I play with the fat and the carbs. If I have somebody who really struggles with cravings and this is the feedback that I'm getting, this is an area where I

typically recommend a lower carb diet. I find that people that really feel like they're white-knuckling it in a diet because they have all these crazy cravings they're going through. Many times it's temporary, it's because it's just like an alcoholic who's been addicted to it in the first few weeks or months is really tough for them. It gets easier over time when they restrict from these foods. And so lowering their carbohydrate intake tends to help them. The other thing is helping them reframe it to Sal's point which is just, hey this is where I also teach them that listen, hunger is not a bad thing. Remind yourself that

when you have that feeling, it's like your body switching over energy systems. It's no longer using the calories and carbohydrates. It's now shifting over to using fat as its fuel. So you're sitting there while you're hungry on the couch, and you're getting leaner. And so reframe the way you look at it. And or if it's something you continue to struggle with,

and you just feel like you're wide knuckling, that's where I manipulate the carbohydrates in the diet and I find these people do better on a low carb diet. Does intermittent fasting really work or is it just another fad? It works no better and maybe even slightly worse than a traditional same calorie, same protein, fat and carbs, same food.

Restricted calorie diet. Yeah, type of diet. Now some people psychologically enjoy fasting, intermittent fasting, because it puts everything in such a structure that it helps them. In my experience, it's more likely to lead a dysfunctional relationship with food. I think fasting for spiritual reasons is beautiful.

It's wonderful, that's why fasting exists in the first place. From a diet perspective, really all it is is a very, it was a very black and white way to cut calories. Oh, you can only eat four hours a day and so people end up eating less as a result of it and that's why it became so popular. But really no additional benefits otherwise.

Simplicity and adherence, I think that's the biggest. I think it's an abuse tool in our space. It's terrible for 90% of the people that use it. Just flat out, it's the wrong way. Because most people are using it to get in shape. They find the rules and can find it in the window. It helps them restrict calories. The problem with that strategy for that is that is not,

most all the clients I ever train that needed to lose weight, I actually, we lacked nutrients. We lacked things like fiber, healthy proteins, healthy fats. They didn't eat enough of the right foods and they ate too much of the wrong foods. And so restricting that window didn't make it any easier to go after the things their body needs. And if I know it's so important for them to build muscle and build a metabolism, constricting them to a smaller window didn't make my job any easier to get there. And so I hate it as a tool for fat loss. I think for

spiritual practices, I think for my my bodybuilders and physique competitors and bikini competitors that were addicted to eating six meals a day, I love using it as a tool to break them, break them free of those chains that they had to eat every two hours. And so I use it as a tool to interrupt things like that or for spiritual practices. I think it's incredible, but it's become an abused tool that people use for fat loss. I think for that it's horrible. Is it okay to have a cheat meal every week or will that totally mess up my progress? I hate this. Yeah so it's okay so physiologically one meal a day is a cheat meal is it gonna mess up my progress? No but here's what you are doing you are moving towards a dysfunctional relationship with food. That's right. That's right. You're looking at food like relationship cheat or yet right and

wrong and I'm the wrong I'm off I'm going off the rails. This totally encourages restrict binge type behavior. There is no cheat meal, there is no this, it's balanced. So what does that look like? Well I have dinner out with my wife once a week so that's the time that I will eat off my plan and eat more for palatability and connection than I am for fat loss and muscle gain. That's it. When people have a cheat meal, boy does this turn into, I've never seen this move someone in a better direction where they have a more sustainable, relaxed,

healthy relationship to food. This does the opposite. I just think it's so funny in why this is even an argument and a debate because we're talking about food. Because if we were talking about the relationship with anything else in our life, the idea of cheating every week would be a horrible strategy.

One night a week, I can have a orgy. I'm trying to work on monogamy with my spouse and stuff like that. If I just had one cheat meal a week, would I be okay? I mean, if we were talking about cheating in anything else when it comes to improving your relationship in anything else, that would be a horrible strategy. Yet we justify it when it comes to food. It makes no sense. Yeah, I don't understand that either. Like, why not take the error and attention out of

something as opposed to intensifying it? That's what you did. 100%. So this came from the bodybuilding space is where cheap diets came from because they're so restricted throughout the whole week that they look forward to that one meal when they get to eat my my three double-double burgers from in and out or whatever that was actually a very popular thing from a point so no no don't worry about that don't think about it as a cheat meal because again here's what happens I start looking forward to my cheat meal fixated on that my entire week is about that one meal I get on Saturday oh my

god I'm gonna go crazy with it it's like what kind of relationship are you developing around food yeah when you do that and is that one meal I get on Saturday, oh my God, I'm gonna go crazy with it. It's like, what kind of relationship are you developing around food when you do that? And is that one that's sustainable in a way to where, because here's what you wanna be ideally. You wanna be fit, healthy, relatively lean, and it's relaxed. I'm not counting calories all the time, I'm not struggling over here,

and then I go and cheat over there. It's just, you know what this looks like? If you extend it, this is like the people who diet for a vacation go on vacation, and then the vacation becomes all about food. You know, it's a similar behavior. Don't conflate what we're saying by, you can never have a double cheeseburger.

Because it's not that at all. It's that the way you're framing it by saying it's a cheat meal or a cheat day is where you're going wrong. Not having the double, double cheeseburger, that's not what's wrong. That's still fuel, that still has protein, That still has fat. That's still car... Like it just counts as calories. It's not cheating or not cheating. It's like you

got to get away from that mindset because that's what's setting you up for the failure and what's wrong. It's not us being high and mighty and be like you should never never cheat on... No, it's not cheating. It's some some meals are more for palatability. Some are for connection. Some are for celebrating. Sometimes you eat over your calorie budget. Sometimes you eat under your calorie budget. It's like, that's a better, that's a better way to frame it because you're only,

you're only making the whole Ben's restrict, you know, thing worse for the average person. And so I've always hated this conversation and argument with people. It's like, it's's not a cheat meal it's not a thing that you should plan to do it's that this points to the fact that I hate my diet so much right daily eating so much one break a week if you hate how you eat so much throughout the week prison cell you can just marry the it. You married the wrong diet. Yeah. How do I stick to my diet when I eat out with friends or family?

Listen, you're not struggling with your weight because of the times you eat out with your friends and family. Unless you eat out with your friends and family every day. Like if this is an everyday thing, well that's a different conversation. But when people stress about this, it's typically like, oh God, you know,

I'm going to my nephew's birthday, or Sunday nights dinner at my parents' house, or Friday night I go out to dinner with my wife. How do I, that's a time you enjoy yourself. And you enjoy something that comes out of the food. I don't even think that's it, okay? I eat out every day, every day. Every day I eat out at least once,

sometimes two, sometimes three times. It's what you choose. Sure sure you can go out to eat I mean we're in a place now where that's the other coin. That's what I said. Yes They say eating out isn't making anybody fat. It's the things that you're choosing to eat when you eat out It's the four pints of beer the pizza and the chicken nuggets that you decided to eat and you could have ordered the the salmon and Rice and vegetable meal and you chose not to when you ate out. Eating out, rarely ever do I find a place, I guess if you're eating out at McDonald's

and Burger King and places like that, but most restaurants have a healthy choice. Start with the protein. And if you have a lot of friends and you go out all the time, I'm not telling you not to do that. I'm just saying follow the other rules that we said, choose something that's a, you know, whole steak or chicken and eat that first and then follow with your vegetables. You you'll be fine.

You'll be fine. You do not need to, it doesn't need to be this like, Oh, you know, only you can enjoy your meals and go crazy. You don't have to live in Tupperware. Yeah. And you don't have to live in Tupperware. It's like, well, make good, make good choices when you eat out the restaurant and you'll be all right.

Should I be taking any supplements to help burn fat or build muscle while I'm dieting? No, but no, you shouldn't. But there are some that may help. When you're cutting your calories, a multivitamin starts to become more important because as you reduce your food intake, so you also reduce your micronutrient intake.

And so nutrient deficiencies tend to be higher in lower calorie diets and they aren't higher calorie diets. Now this is not always true, because a lower calorie, healthy diet that's nutrient dense has more micronutrients than an unhealthy high calorie diet. But nonetheless, it's not a bad idea to invest in a multivitamin.

And then next is creatine. Creatine is a just general longevity health supplement that also helps build muscle, which brings us to the first point, which was get stronger. So when you're getting stronger, creatine helps you get stronger, and it helps you in the pursuit

of speeding up your metabolism. But do you need those supplements? No, not unless you have a nutrient efficiency for the multivitamin, otherwise you're totally fine. No, not unless you have nutrient efficiency for the multivitamin, otherwise you're totally fine. No, there's never been a time, and this has been our stance on supplements forever. I mean, there's lots of supplements we take,

there's lots of supplements we like, but I've never had a client who's at 30% of body fat, and I take them down to 10%, and the reason was because of any supplement. Or they didn't get down to 10% because of a supplement. It is never the deciding factor. They don't have a supplement deficiency. And that person is it.

Could it help a little bit? Are they awesome? Do they help in performance? There's lots of cool benefits to it. It's nice to have. It is not necessary, nor has it ever been necessary for me to get a client in that shape. Excellent.

Look, if you like our show, come find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at find us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefan, and Adam's at Mind Pump. Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

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